George Soros to pump $50 million into countering "free-market zealotry"

[F]inancier George Soros is announcing a $50 million effort to speed things along. This week Soros is gathering some of the leading practitioners of the market-skeptic school, who were marginalized during the era of "free-market fundamentalism," among them Nobelists Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Sir James Mirrlees. He's also creating an "Institute for New Economic Thinking" to make research grants, convene symposiums, and establish a journal, all in an effort to take back the economics profession from the champions of free-market zealotry who have dominated it for decades, and to correct the failures of decades of market deregulation. Soros hopes matching funds will bring the total endowment up to $200 million.

That's a lot of money. It's so much money, in fact, that it's hard to imagine how an economics think tank will use it, although Soros may be imagining more of an endowment model that seeds the "Institute for New Economic Thinking" far into the future.

Either way, this brings up something I've been wondering about: where's the new conservative infrastructure? After their defeat in 2004, Democrats funneled a lot of cash into new institutions. Media Matters, the Democracy Alliance, the Center for American Progress, and many other fixtures of the contemporary landscape are products of that manic period of rebuilding. Previous to that, Democrats tried to respond to their defeats in the 80s with groups like the Democratic Leadership Council that tried to moderate the party's ideology.

But Republicans have actually suffered much worse defeats in recent years, and not done much about them. There's not been a concerted effort to moderate the party's ideology or rectify perceived structural imbalances. They seem to be hoping their opponents get weaker rather than pursuing a strategy to make their party stronger. Insofar as new structures are emerging, they seem, like the Tea Parties, to be conservative rather than Republican, and as likely to tear the party apart as make it whole.

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Several weeks ago, we presented a list of CEOs and corporations who have had the highest number of direct visits to the White House and, by implication, president Obama. As we said, these are the corporations (and CEOs) who own the White House, and the US presidency .

REUTERSWASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to pick U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a climate-change skeptic and an advocate for expanded oil and gas development, to run the Interior Department, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters on Friday.

Following MoveOn.org's "success" last Friday, George Soros is back on the lips of an increasing number of Americans as Bloomberg reports, the liberal billionaire, whose effort to unseat President George W. Bush in 2004 shattered political spending records, is returning to big-ticket activism after an 11-year hiatus.

George Soros, along with being the man who broke the pound in 1992, has the interesting privilege of being able to read his own obituary. This is something money can’t buy. Reuters launched the report of the hedge fund pioneer/philanthropist’s demise a tad prematurely.
Ed Harrison snagged the text:

Japan is sinking in quicksand. The more it struggles to free itself, the faster it sinks. But that won’t stop it from trying… even if that means destroying itself.
For evidence, we turn to a bizarre question proposed in yesterday’s issue of The Atlantic:
“Is Abenomics Doomed — or Will Japan Un-Doom Itself?”
Umm… What? How does a country “un-doom” itself? Isn’t being “doomed” about as finite as it gets?

First CNN, then AP, now Reuters: the entire media is increasingly start to look like amateur hour. Unless, of course, Soros is like Osama, and had several "reincarnated" body doubles, with the original specimen long gone... Just out from Reuters, an article which will certainly be withdrawn in milliseconds. Intern heads will roll for this, although it would be truly "New Normal" if Soros were to have a heart attack upon reading of his own death, and die from it.

As 2013 unfolds, Republicans are still recovering from the results of last November’s election. The outcome, worse than even most GOP pessimists had predicted, created a shockwave in the party that is still reverberating. This condition isn’t unusual for the party out of power. The Democrats experienced similar time in the desert during George W. Bush’s presidency.

Noahpinion asks: “[W]hy did Asian-Americans break so strongly for Obama? I provide my (slightly different) answer.
As Noahpinion observes, given Asian American’s higher than average income, the Romney-esque argument that the group is one of “takers” not “makers” cannot be correct (of course, there is little empirical content to this particular thesis, anyway).